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According to Christmas custom, any two people who meet under a hanging of mistletoe are obliged to kiss.
The custom may be of Scandinavian origin.
"The mistletoe is still hung up in farm-houses and kitchens at Christmas, and the young men have the privilege of kissing the girls under it, plucking each time a berry from the bush.
When the berries are all plucked the privilege ceases."
The tradition dictates that a man is allowed to kiss any woman standing underneath mistletoe, and that bad luck would befall any woman who refused the kiss.
Mistletoe is the common name for a group of parasitic plants that grow attached to and within the branches of a tree or shrub.
The name mistletoe originally referred to the species Viscum album (European mistletoe, of the family Santalaceae in the order Santalales); it is the only species native to Great Britain and much of Europe.
A broad array of animals depend on mistletoe for food, consuming the leaves and young shoots, transferring pollen between plants and dispersing the sticky seeds
Very much appreciated. M, (*_*)
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mistletoe, viscum album, green, leaves, berries, conceptual art, ribbon, red, bow, Christmas, plant, studio, square, black background, colour, NikonD7000, Magda-indigo
Mistletoe is apparently a parasite that grows on the trees down in the hill country of Texas. It looks odd to see the trees with their leaves down, but patches of mistletoe adorning them here and there.
The mistletoe is free-hanging from the top of his hat - took a bit of nifty work with invisible thread and a tiny needle ;)
On the aforementioned Eastern Mistletoe (Phoradendron leucarpum; Durham NC, USA), I was pleased to find:
Soft Scale Insects - family Coccidae (~1-2 mm)
Also uploaded at:
bugguide.net/node/view/1778845
A helpful entomologist on Facebook identifies as:
Brown Soft Scale - Coccus hesperidum
Some of the scale insects have been parasitized by wasps, so we have a hemiparasitic plant, a parasitic insect of that plant, and a parasite of that insect--parasites all the way down.
This little fig plant was so adorable, I decided to take a photo from above and at eye level. The former shows off the foliage and the latter shows the trunk and branch growth habit.
HFC_6809
Pendant / Brooch combination. Link chain necklace with hand fabricated links which can also be worn independently.
Vitreous enamel on copper; sterling and fine silver, hand fabricated setting. Spring steel pin. Vesuvianite (idocrase), peridot, Canadian jade (nephrite), tourmaline.
The Mistletoe collection is obviously inspired by colonies of parasite Mistletoe plants, their surreal circular shapes seeming to float among the branches of the trees they colonise. Its status among humans has ranged from sacred plant to pest, but the truth of it is that, as with everything in nature, it is an ecologically important plant that offers food and refuge to wildlife.
The first two pieces date back to 2010, and I gave them new sterling frames in 2021. As most of my collections, I come back to it time and again, producing more pieces.
Something that didn’t dawn on me until much later is that my subconscious had driven me to design all of these as little gates or portals, through which a backlit view of spring appears, dappled sun glittering though the new, yellow-green leaves sprouting from branches. Thus the full name of the collection is Mistletoe: portals onto spring. The theme of greenery, fronds, roots, branches and particles floating in the sunlight spills out onto the frames.
The enamel is always in yellow-green to emerald green shades typical of spring, with a combination of techniques used ranging from wet-packing, dry sifting, over-firing and, always, painting on enamel with vitrifiable paints. Multiple firings are necessary, ranging from 910 to 810 °C. For this collection I use a range of stones in green shades, from the waxy opaque yellow-green of serpentine to super glittery, transparent micro-faceted vesuvianite… peridot, nephrite, green spinel, emerald-coloured chrome diopside… Sometimes I add a contrasting touch of warmth with, for example, garnets.
This little fig plant was so adorable, I decided to take a photo from above and at eye level. The former shows off the foliage and the latter shows the trunk and branch growth habit.
HFC_6808
Praise God for the opportunity to travel up north to Baguio for a short New Year's vacation (Dec. 29, 2013 - Jan. 1, 2014) . Despite having some mechanical problems with our vehicle, God's protection allowed us to arrive safely. PTL!!
They had several bunches hanging over the path from the tree with all the heart-shaped lights in it. SO CUTE! Just watch your step...
Oops, sorry i called this a scarlet honey-eater. It was in the same tree as the scarlet & to be honest I haven't seen one of these beauties before and just presumed it was maybe the female scarlet honey eater. .....Thanks for the correction :-)
Copyright © 2012 by Ian J MacDonald. Permission required for any use. All rights reserved
Mistletoe.
It's history is as confusing and contradictory as human relationships. The more I think about it the more I believe it is perhaps a very fitting symbol of human relationships and customs.
It is an ancient plant that grew before tall trees evolved. When trees evolved to be tall mistletoe stayed small but evolved to grow up on the limbs of the trees. Small rootlets steal water and some nutrients from the host tree, but rarely kill it. Mistle thrushes and other birds are fond of mistletoe's berries. The alluring berries have sticky innards. When birds eat the berries they stick to their beaks and the birds wipe them off their beaks, spreading them to new areas and new trees starting new mistletoe plants. The plant also depends on the birds to eat the berries, fly away and excrete them onto other trees.
Mistletoe was apparently highly coveted by ancient pagan societies. The exact reasons why ancient societies valued mistletoe is lost to history. Our knowledge of their uses of mistletoe comes from a few ancient (but not pagan) writers, best guesses and attempts to reconstruct societies that left little written word, just statues appearing to wear crowns of mistletoe leaves, and carved imagery that resembles mistletoe. Perhaps mistletoe was venerated because it remained green through winter? Perhaps it appeared to have healing or hallucinogenic properties? Maybe it was prized because, like its relative sandalwood, it was burned as incense? Others have suggested that its berries represented fertility or masculinity because the white sticky juice resembles semen, when deposited on a tree by a bird grew a mistletoe?
The only written information we have comes from a few Roman writers who wrote broad ethnographies of the Celts. A famous passage by Pliny describes white-robed Celtic druids shimmying up oak trees to harvest the mistletoe with a golden sickle. This information may have been quite old. It was certainly shared by many different writers and certainly there was some distortions in the retellings. It may have been that these customs were as relevant to 1st century AD Celts as medieval Christianity is to Christians today. There are probably kernels of truth in the observations, and in the end these are some of the only descriptions that have come down to us.
Mistletoe's association with kissing might have been a Scandanavian custom, possibly retained by the relatively late pagan societies such as the Vikings. The writer Washing Irving described it as a Scandanavian custom that that came to America via the Dutch, whereby a young man could kiss a girl under a mistletoe sprig BUT had to pick a berry each time they smooched. When the berries were gone, the kissing was DONE! The kissing and Christmas associations can be found as far back as the 1500s. The ancient Celtic and other iron age pagan religions were mostly long-extinct, replaced by Christianity, or more aptly, Christianized - keeping many old customs but couched in Christian theology rather than paganism. The circle on a Celtic cross is a good example as the circle, as a wheel, was a very common motif in ancient Celtic imagery. It found its way into Christianity without much thought of the contradictory nature of the religions, nor concern that it was a pagan symbol, and I tend to think mistletoe also was subsumed in the same manner.
The Victorians seemed to almost fetishize old customs and traditions. It is not unexpected that druidistic societies formed during this era as people tried to reconnect with their Celtic roots. Perhaps the soullessness of the industrial age made them long for the "good" old days when druids wandered Europe in white robes gathering mistletoe at the solstices. It was all nonsense and historically inaccurate, and the good old days of the iron age where hardly as good as they were imagined - but all societies do it, even us. The Victorians were also highly ritualized and prudish and games that allowed sexual exploration without seeming to break the social rules were common. We can laugh but think of the 1950s America where a virtuous outward appearance was everything and wild swinging, drinking, and carousing went on behind the scenes. Kissing under the mistletoe would have been one of those outlets where taboos like physical affection could be acted out; "well you can't not kiss if there is a mistletoe hanging there! It's against the rules" Perhaps all that singing about mistletoe in 1950s Christmas music is just the 1850s reenacted - with a martini.
Finally mistletoe is actually a pretty ugly plant. It's a parasite and It is poisonous. It's name is thought to mean "dung stick" from ancient German (mist: dung , Tan: stick) because it appears to grow from bird droppings left on trees. Imagine if we kissed under the dungstick!? Maybe it is fitting - it's biology is pretty well understood down to the molecular level, but its origins as a fetish object in customs and religion are shrouded in mystery and confusion, spread, perhaps inaccurately by writers with selfish motives. It's deeply embedded in Christianity but probably only because it was so integral to pagan religions - but that was so long ago nobody remembers the real purpose. Maybe it was only used at good times and nobody could bear to give it up? It is a symbol of love and affection, possibly of sex and fertility too, but is deadly toxic if ingested. Sounds an awful lot like human relations. Happy holidays.